A complex racial schism threatens to dismantle the signs of
academic progress in the Mount Vernon, N.Y., district.

A complex racial schism threatens to dismantle the
signs of academic progress in the Mount Vernon, N.Y.,
district.

Walking every block in this community, they went door to door
rallying residents with a stark message: Mount Vernon schools are rife
with nepotism, cronyism, and racism. African-American children are
failing. Blacks are denied a fair share of school jobs and
contracts.

Claiming that the all-white school board and the white
superintendent served as the political arm of the city's
Italian-American civic association, African-American ministers and
activists mounted a grassroots effort that led to the ouster of every
white member of the school board by 1999. Today, every school board
member in this densely populated suburb of New York City is black. And,
for the first time, so is its superintendent.

Some call the community-mobilization effort a modern-day civil
rights movement. Others believe gullible voters were deceived by an
onslaught of racially charged lies.

What's clear is that what began seven years ago as a quest to run
the schools and better educate black children has evolved into a
complex racial schism that threatens to dismantle the signs of academic
progress that have brought national acclaim to this small city
bordering the Bronx.

Out and About: Ronald
O. Ross reads with students at Lincoln Elementary School in Mount
Vernon, N.Y. He has overseen a sharp rise in test scores since
becoming superintendent, but has alienated some of the city's
other black leaders.
—Allison Shelley/Education Week

That attention has stemmed primarily from the 9,700-student district's
test scores, which appear to vindicate the African-American activists'
efforts. From 1999 to 2001, Mount Vernon's 4th graders posted the
greatest gains in English/language arts test scores in New York state.
Students' math scores soared over the two-year period as well.

This predominantly black school district is now the darling of New
York state Commissioner of Education Richard P. Mills, as well as Hugh
B. Price, the president and chief executive officer of the National
Urban League. National newspaper and television stories have trumpeted
the district's test-score prowess.

"This is an affirmation of what can happen when parents and
community leadership get fed up," says Price, who lives in neighboring
New Rochelle, N.Y. "Through this effort, they've made heroes of the
teachers."

But behind the headlines is a set of local dynamics that might
surprise those who have seen Mount Vernon held up as a resounding
success story. A strong undercurrent of racial rifts, power struggles,
and distrust threatens to mar students' academic feats. Some board
members and the city's African-American mayor question the value of the
school system's test scores and allege that the district is "teaching
to the test," complaints echoed by some white critics as well.

Fueling the tensions, many people here believe, is the
take-no-prisoners management style of Superintendent Ronald O. Ross.
Hailed by admirers as a charismatic hero of urban education, he is
denounced by local critics as a brash bully.

The upshot is that the schools chief may be on his way out of the
very city he has helped put on the nation's school improvement map.

All signs pointed to Mount Vernon as a district in need of
resuscitation when a coalition of black board members became a voting
majority in 1997.

For years, legions of middle-class parents, both white and black,
had abandoned the district for private schools and neighboring public
schools. A fatal stabbing at Mount Vernon High School in 1994 fostered
the belief that schools here were unsafe. The state required six
elementary schools to formulate academic-improvement plans because of
lagging test scores.

So the recent test-score backlash—especially from those within
the African-American community—infuriates the straight-talking
Ross. After listing the accomplishments of his four-year tenure, which
include the passage in 2000 of a $100 million bond referendum for
school renovations and construction, the superintendent declares: "If I
had been a white man and done the same things, some black people would
have erected a statue to me."

Instead, rumors abound that Ross, 57, will be replaced by the school
board when his contract expires next year.

Personalities may be open to differing interpretations, but many
observers see Mount Vernon's test scores as evidence of genuine
progress. Last year, 74 percent of Mount Vernon's 4th graders met or
exceeded the state standard on New York's English/language arts test,
while 79 percent hit that mark in mathematics. Since 1999, when
students first took the 4th grade test, Mount Vernon's language arts
scores have skyrocketed by 38 percentage points, the greatest gain of
any of the Empire State's 720 school districts. Based on their scores,
10 of the city's 11 elementary schools made the state's list of "most
improved" schools.

At Longfellow Elementary School, where 99 percent of the students
are nonwhite and 82 percent of the children qualify for free or
reduced-price lunches, the percentage of students attaining or
exceeding the state standard on the language arts assessment jumped by
67 percentage points in two years. Now, three of the district's
elementary schools post average language arts scores that exceed those
of some schools in wealthier neighboring communities that spend
thousands of dollars more per pupil.

Paradoxically, Mount Vernon's victories have come as parents in
nearby Scarsdale, a more affluent, higher-achieving Westchester County
suburb, have banded together to protest the damage that they believe
the state's testing program is doing to classroom quality.

But people who are vocally skeptical of Mount Vernon's gains argue
that the community has much to lose if it blindly buys what they regard
as test-score propaganda. They point out that the district has no
written curriculum. And test scores at the high school and middle
schools still rank among the lowest in Westchester County.

"I don't gauge educational success solely on reading scores," says
Frances Wynn, a school board member. "I don't care how much [the score]
improves or how great it is. The state blew [the results] out of
proportion."

This summer, when the state releases results of language arts and
math tests taken earlier this year and those yet to be administered in
May, the district expects better showings not only by 4th graders, but
also by 8th graders—the focus of district staff-development
efforts this year. Last month, Mount Vernon learned that 94 percent of
its 5th graders met or exceeded the standard on the state's social
studies assessment that they took in November.

"So far, I have seen no reason to do anything but praise everything
[Mount Vernon] has accomplished," says Roseanne DeFabio, the assistant
commissioner for curriculum, instruction, and assessment for New York
state's department of education. "I'm rooting for them."

Surrounded by upper-middle-class communities in Westchester County,
residents here emphasize the city's small-town feel by reminding
visitors that "Mount Vernon is just 4 square miles."

Often described as more urban than suburban, this city of 68,000
residents has subsidized housing within blocks of $500,000 homes.

Like many American cities, Mount Vernon was divided geographically
by race in the past. But today African-American families make up 60
percent of the city's population and reside in every neighborhood.

This demographic shift is clear in Mount Vernon's classrooms, where
nearly eight in 10 of students are classified as African-American, 10
percent as white, and 10 percent as Hispanic.

As the city's complexion changed over the past 30
years, the school district's leadership remained
unchanged—predominantly white.

Yet as the city's complexion changed over the past 30 years, the
school district's leadership, including both the school board and the
superintendent, remained unchanged—predominantly white.

Many here assert that a local community group, the Italian Civic
Association, maintained a political grip on the district—the
city's largest employer—and its budget, which now stands at
roughly $100 million.

The ICA was founded in 1918 as a local advocacy group to help
immigrants from Italy fight discrimination in Mount Vernon. Over the
years, the membership-based organization emerged as a political power,
endorsing and financing school board candidates, most of whom were ICA
members. In addition, many ICA members were top school administrators,
including William C. Pratella, the district's superintendent from 1972
to 1997.

Peter Plati, the current ICA president, acknowledges that, at first
glance, the ties between the district's leadership and the association
could be seen as a "power play."

But he stresses: "It's not that decisions were made from the
ICA."

Looking back on his long tenure in Mount Vernon from his current
post as the chairman of the education division at Mercy College in
Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., Pratella strongly denies that his administration was
racist. He says that all employees and students were treated fairly,
and that the schools received equitable funding.

Pratella still keeps a list of his minority-staff appointments over
his quarter-century at the district's helm as proof of his inclusion
efforts. In 1997, he says, a fifth of the district's staff was made up
of African-American employees. During his tenure, he points out, three
of the district's 15 schools were renamed to honor prominent
African-American educators in the city.

"All of our schools were majority African-American," he adds. "How
could you discriminate?"

But that's exactly what many African-Americans in Mount Vernon
charge that Pratella and white school board members did. As many people
here tell it, school leaders, in cahoots with the ICA, gave lucrative
contracts and jobs to their relatives and redirected funds to
north-side schools where most of the white children attended
classes.

"I wasn't against white folks," says Richardson, who ran
unsuccessfully for the school board in 1979. "I was just against what
they were doing to our children."

Keeping faith: The
Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson of Grace Baptist Church worked to
elect blacks to the school board and now backs the
superintendent.
—Allison Shelley/Education Week

To craft a more cohesive election strategy, Mount Vernon's black
ministers formed the Coalition for the Empowerment of People of African
Ancestry, or CEPAA, which would compete against the ICA's candidates.
The coalition, put together in 1995, held its own nominating
conventions at Grace Baptist Church to choose African-American school
board candidates to run for the board on the CEPAA slate. The board's
nine members are elected to staggered, three-year terms.

But the coalition suffered a crushing defeat in 1996: Every
candidate on the CEPAA slate lost, and the lone African-American on the
board resigned shortly afterward.

Carole J. Morris, the director of the Mount Vernon Neighborhood
Health Center, says some doubted that there were enough black voters in
the city to elect a black-majority board. Yet Morris, who has been the
chief of staff for the city's Democratic Party for the past 25 years,
had a simple message for voters: "You have to vote black."

CEPAA raised about $50,000 in 1997 and on Election Day, 500
volunteers canvassed the city encouraging people to vote. All five
CEPAA candidates won, rocking the ICA, and reducing the number of
whites on the board to four—thereby forming the board's
first-ever black majority.

CEPAA's work wasn't finished with the election. The candidates the
group had supported set about fulfilling their campaign pledge to
replace Superintendent Pratella.

Weary of battling the new board, and after 36 years with the Mount
Vernon schools, Pratella retired from the district.

"I gave my whole life to that place," he says.

Two years later, in 1999, another four CEPAA candidates were
elected, wiping out the ICA-supported candidates and starting Mount
Vernon schools on a new path.

Teaching wasn't Ronald O. Ross' first calling. Born in New York
City's Harlem during World War II, he was raised in Warrenton, Va. In
the late 1960s, Ross was a Howard University student in Washington
trying to earn enough money to enroll in law school when he decided to
escape the draft by signing up for the Teacher Corps, a federal program
that sent teachers to urban and rural areas. Teaching became Ross'
vocation, and he went on to become a New York City high school
principal.

‘I put race on the table. I put corruption on
the table. That makes people uncomfortable.’

Ronald O. Ross,

Superintendent,

Mount Vernon school district

As the deputy superintendent of the Hempstead, N.Y., schools on Long
Island from 1996 to 1998, Ross led an effort that improved test scores
at a local high school. Still, Ross, a tall, slender man with
salt-and-pepper hair, wanted the chance to be No. 1, he says.

Although friends and colleagues called Mount Vernon a "no-win
situation," Ross stood by his mantra: "There's nothing wrong with
public schools that can't be fixed."

Impressed by his unfailing passion for educating children, the Mount
Vernon school board, including its four white members at the time,
unanimously agreed to offer Ross a five-year contract in the fall of
1998. Soon after he tackled his new role, Ross rankled some members of
the district's staff and school board. Using a whispery, smooth voice
that can alternately sound melodic and inspiring or gruff and
intimidating, Ross unleashed his no-holds-barred leadership style in an
address to staff members.

In that speech, he warned teachers, especially white educators, that
they must make him believe that they cared about their students or face
unemployment. They would, he declared, stop making excuses for why poor
black children couldn't learn. He charged that Mount Vernon school
officials were like "pigs at a trough" in the way they consumed
district resources.

"I put race on the table. I put corruption on the table. That makes
people uncomfortable," Ross recalls matter-of-factly. "That's not
arrogance. I put children first. I didn't come here to be liked."

Stunned and outraged, many school staff members resigned or retired
after that speech. Ross says good riddance. But Wynn, the school board
member, complains that Ross damaged employee morale.

Ross' straightforward delivery may be hard to take, but the Rev. W.
Darin Moore, the current board president, agrees with the
superintendent's assessment of the district under the old regime.

"It was more benign neglect than intentional abuse," Moore says of
the previous administration. "But the result was the same. You had a
whole group of black children warehoused and moved through the system
without getting a proper education."

Ross, who has four adult children and four grandchildren, appears to
be a completely different person with students. He often spends time
reading to children at the district's elementary schools. The
superintendent even hosted a sleepover for students at the district
office last year.

"He has such a way with children," says Brenda L. Smith, the
district's deputy superintendent. "That is his greatest strength. He
loves and believes in children."

With adults, however, Ross tends to alienate dissenters, because of
his unwavering insistence on his vision of school reform, Moore says.
But, the board president adds, Ross' passion for raising student
achievement "has motivated him to tear down obstacles that others would
tiptoe through, and finesse their way through, and compromise."

As Ross set about transforming the Mount Vernon schools, he replaced
every top district administrator within a year. Every school was
assigned at least one assistant principal. Teachers who Ross believed
were ineffective were transferred, embarrassed, and moved around until
they either left or shaped up.

He also implemented a new hiring practice to diversify the workforce
and eliminate what he saw as cronyism; today, roughly 40 percent of the
staff is African-American, about double the proportion four years ago.
A school-based committee interviews potential hires and makes its
recommendations to the district's human resources director or Ross
himself.

But some of the superintendent's staff appointments drew the ire of
board members, who questioned the new employees' experience and
political allegiances. Now, critics point out that Ross' entire top
management team has resigned or been replaced in the past four
years.

Many say Ross' most important personnel choice was Alice Siegel, the
district's English/language arts administrator. Siegel was planning to
retire from the high-performing Greenwich, Conn., schools the year Ross
signed on with Mount Vernon.

In 1999, the first year of New York's new assessment program,
two-thirds of Mount Vernon's 4th graders scored below the state
standard in English/language arts, and almost half were failing math.
Secondary students' scores were even worse.

Siegel and Ross emphasized improving the instruction of reading and
writing in the elementary schools, believing those subjects to be the
foundation of future learning.

"Teachers would say, 'I taught them that,'" recalls Siegel, who is a
co-author of a series of educational books for children. "I would say,
'You might have, but they didn't learn it.'"

Soon after Ross took over as superintendent, a
relentless, hands-on professional-development program
emerged.

A relentless, hands-on professional-development program emerged,
with Siegel modeling instruction and coaching teachers in the
classroom. Reading specialists were dispatched into 4th grade
classrooms. National teaching experts led additional training
sessions.

Teachers also were given common planning time. That allowed for
exchanging ideas, working together, and, most of all, providing one
another with support. It's the same approach being used with 8th grade
teachers this year.

The district uses both the phonics and whole-language approaches to
teach reading. Fourth graders spend 90 minutes daily reading, writing,
and discussing a subject. Students also are given books to read at
home. Last year, they were challenged by the superintendent to read 50
books—double the number encouraged by the state board of
regents—to earn a chance to win a new bicycle. In all, 168 met
the goal and received new bicycles.

When it came to testing, teachers explained to students what good
writing looks like, stressing the elements that would bring them top
scores on the state assessment. After school, students struggling
academically were tutored.

Class considerations:
After having her 4th graders read from the story "The Boy Who
Drew Cats," teacher Modesta Curzio poses questions during a
lesson at Parker Elementary School.
—Allison Shelley/Education Week

Tisa Kearns, a 4th grade teacher at Mount Vernon's Cecil H. Parker
Elementary School, says students must be challenged with questions that
"cause them to think." She encourages her pupils to be "divergent
thinkers," mindful that there is more than one way to solve a
problem.

Next door to Kearns at Parker Elementary, words cover the walls of
Modesta Curzio's 4th grade class, making it a kind of alphabet-soup
wallpaper. Personality traits, like helping, foolish, and mischievous,
are divided into positive and negative lists.

Curzio instructs the students to listen carefully as she reads a
passage called "Sharing Crops," about a former slave who grows crops
for a landowner in exchange for a share of the proceeds.

Students eagerly scribble notes in their workbooks as Curzio reads
the passage a second time. Then Curzio peppers her students with
questions that they easily conquer.

The most critical question, the story's lesson, brings a variety of
impressive responses from these pint-size deep thinkers. Amber says:
"When you try to trick someone, you only end up cheating yourself."

Some observers suggest that Mount Vernon's secret may be that the
district didn't purchase an expensive academic program, and has instead
spent more than $3 million on teacher professional development since
1998. By contrast, the district spent just $52,500 to train teachers in
1997.

"It wasn't just coming in and waving a magic wand," Siegel says.
"This should serve as an example, that clear focus and team building
can yield good results."

Mills, the state education commissioner, praises Ross for educating
teachers rather than buying a "canned curriculum." Mount Vernon didn't
implement any unusual strategies, he says; it's Ross' message that
resonates powerfully: "Every child is going to learn to read at a high
level—period."

If educators want to implement the Mount Vernon model in their own
communities, they'll have to wait. No guide or, for that matter, no
unified curriculum exists—a lack that generates skepticism in
some quarters. District officials say work to document the district's
approach is under way.

"We asked, 'How did you do this?'" says board member Wynn. "I know
you can't get scores like this by giving kids bikes. The basic
procedure should be clear."

Pleading his case for control of the city's schools, Davis—an
African-American whose sister-in-law is school board member Frances
Wynn—explains that the schools receive more than half of Mount
Vernon's revenue. But the mayor has no influence over how those dollars
are spent, complains Davis, who wears his gray hair in dreadlocks.

A former architect, Davis also believes he is better suited to
direct the district's $100 million construction and renovation
plan.

It's criticism from Davis and members of the all-black school board
that most distresses some black people in the community.

It's easy to unify people around a cause when there's a common
enemy, like the ICA, observes Morris, the local Democratic Party
official. Now, however, the common enemy is gone, she says, yet some
people don't realize the battle was won and fight one another
instead.

Ross' assessment of his African-American critics is more blunt: "The
black people criticizing me are the same Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas
who never said a word under the predominantly white
administration."

Some community members believe that the Coalition for the
Empowerment of People of African Ancestry quickly began mimicking the
Italian Civic Association's failings, engaging in cronyism and
nepotism. Some say Richardson, the Grace Baptist Church pastor, is
calling the shots and protecting Ross.

"We almost reversed and did the same thing [as the ICA]," says Wynn,
who has cut her ties to CEPAA and says she never felt comfortable being
linked to the group.

Richardson dismisses claims of political meddling, pointing out that
CEPAA disbanded last year and won't play a role in the upcoming school
board elections next month. In fact, he joins the ICA in saying he
would prefer a more racially and ethnically diverse school board.

Some believe that the Coalition for the Empowerment of
People of African Ancestry quickly began mimicking the Italian Civic
Association's failings, engaging in cronyism and nepotism.

For its part, the ICA has retreated to the school-board-election
sidelines. The feeling in Mount Vernon is that you can't fight the
black churches, says Len Sarver, who served on the board from 1996 to
1999 with the ICA's backing. Sarver, who supports a mayorally
controlled district, says more families are opting out of the city's
schools. It's a trend he predicts will continue.

"I'm afraid that Mount Vernon is probably doomed," warns Sarver, who
sought unsuccessfully to found a charter school in the city last
year.

There's also growing concern about a recent state financial audit
showing that Mount Vernon has serious lapses in record-keeping that
could have led to a $12 million budget shortfall.

Ross vehemently disputes the audit's findings. He calls the report
flawed, and emphasizes that under his leadership, the district has
ended every year in the black.

But the audit has given ammunition to the district's doubters.

Atiim B. Sentwali, a longtime school board critic, vilifies both
past and current board members as the host of a local cable-TV talk
show called "Community Forum." Charging that the board has abdicated
its fiscal responsibilities to Superintendent Ross, Sentwali is urging
voters to reject the school system's budget in May.

"The majority of the people in Mount Vernon have been drugged by the
complexion of the board members and the superintendent," declares
Sentwali, who is African-American.

As the community debates the validity of his success, Ross forges
ahead with plans to academically revamp the two middle schools and the
city's only traditional high school. The district will construct an
additional high school and another middle school. Sixth graders will
join the 7th and 8th graders at the middle schools, Ross says.

Whether Ross will be in Mount Vernon to shepherd that plan through
to completion is unclear. Although he received a $25,000 raise last
year, boosting his salary to $175,000, board members are reluctant to
discuss extending Ross' contract beyond the summer of 2003.

Now a media magnet who receives standing ovations after speaking at
national conferences, Ross won't talk about being courted for other
jobs. Regardless, Ross believes that he will never please Mount
Vernon.

"The level of venom and personal, poisonous, libelous attacks has
been very hard to bear," he says. "I don't know when I'll leave.

"But when I do," he says, pausing, "it won't be because they ran me
out of here."

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